I work for a large IT contractor that has some very large clients (City, Hospital, Oil and Gas, Power, etc), and from what we've seen doing deployments, support, and coming through the imaging labs (one lab does 100s of desktops/laptops on a daily basis) And the results we've seen are the following:

1) Our earlier hardware contracts with Dell (which includes the XPS and the Alienware line) had impressive hardware numbers, but if they weren't sitting on the desk for most of the time, then we ran in to a lot of HDD, and motherboard issues. Same with the HPs.

2) Since we've moved to Asus and Samsung, and moved mostly SSDs, all our clients are a lot more happy. The drivers work great, they hold up to a lot of abuse (for a laptop of course).

3) The panasonic toughbooks that get carried around a lot by police/ems/fire have seen a huge decrease in returns by replacing constantly failing hard drives with SSDs.

Basically, statistically speaking, the Asus laptop with an SSD is going to most likely give you the best chance at longevity and reliability and least amount of setup headaches. Just get the extended warranty. I think that's one of the few items where an extended warranty is worth it.

— _______________
Binarymichael
"We can do anything, we just can't do everything." -Todd Howard (re-quote)